Work Text:
yuuta is breathing. he’s - breathing. his room is dark, the faint light of an overcast dawn groping pudgy, slow fingers through the blinds. he knows it’s past time for him to have woken up, to have gone to class. his bed has hands, though, hands that reach over his body and cling to him in a toxic lover’s embrace and they’re just too heavy for him to move.
music is trickling from his phone - his sleep playlist. the room is swinging along to the beat, he realizes, in vertigo. the steady soft thrum fills his head with cotton, and his thoughts are drifting somewhere, and he doesn’t really care to follow.
ever so unfortunately, yuuta is conscious.
he hates mornings like these - days, like these, that remind him of before. before he came to jujutsu high, before he went on his missions abroad and discovered so much more of himself, of the world and what it meant. he guesses that no matter how many more pieces of yourself that you find, scattered across the planet, you can’t hide from the you that began it all.
his fingers twitch, and he… yuuta wants to see his friends. he wants to go train, to watch panda get pulverized by maki as toge wheezes out a laugh next to him. he wants to receive one of gojo’s stupid souvenirs, yet another dumb character-themed keychain that would be tossed onto his desk from across the room. and gojo would wink, incredibly obviously, at yuuta’s embarrassment, while maki would smirk at him from her seat. with them, the scampering of his heart and the frantic scuttling of his soul smoothes into something like the still surface of a pond. hazy, sunlit.
but he always comes back to this. again, and again, no matter what he’s become, no matter how much he tried, this time. his brain, no longer in his possession, reminds him of the faces of his relatives as they screamed. the pure disappointment oozing from every inflection of their voices, every particle of spit and rage and
the hits that flew into his face. he flinches at nothing. it hurts, still.
maybe staying here is best after all. gojo said he’d be lonely, but maybe it’s safe (yuuta is trembling, hands clutching at the comforters, struggling to keep his chattering teeth from biting his tongue). it’s comfortable - (his heart is beating entirely too quickly, and he’s lightheaded beyond belief). at least he doesn’t have to deal with the knowledge that they can all see his weakness, that they’re always judging. always pitying the frayed threads that hold his being together. always laughing at how he falls apart.
yuuta feels a ripple in his cursed energy- rika. she’s trying to reach out, to soothe his distress, and-
fuck.
and that’s just what makes it all overflow, isn’t it? rika. his first friend, his best friend, his first love. the one that he kept cursed for years, trapped in a limbo with no real will of her own.
he escaped from the accident, he escaped from the war, all with a pat on the back from the very girl whose peaceful afterlife he shattered. rika lied about how much it all hurt her, probably, to make yuuta feel better. yeah. she was always the type to do that- put away her pain so that everybody else would be taken care of. he doesn’t deserve that sort of privilege, that sort of care. and yet, rika continued for all those years, protecting him because he couldn’t do it himself. because he was pathetic. freak. don’t go near that one. kids die if they hang around him too long. he’s cursed.
when did he start crying?
it takes entirely too much energy to let his tears out, but it would take an impossibly greater effort to even try and stop them. grief mangles his heart like a knife between ribs, mental anguish turning physical with the growing ache in his chest. he wants to scream, vaguely wishes the knife in his sternum was real enough to take him out, but he can’t do anything except stay just like this. curled into himself, hands pulling his head towards his knees in a desperate attempt to quiet his thoughts, and he knows that if he dares to move he will shatter completely. so he stays, and his chest heaves with increasingly frantic sobs, and it’s so hard to take in enough breath and he’s getting woozier and he hopes, he hopes he’s being quiet enough that nobody walking outside will hear-
knock knock.
“kelp?”
yuuta feels a wave of panicked energy burst from his body and echo through the dorms. he immediately holds his breath, forcing back every sound despite how his throat aches with the force of his distress.
“…mustard leaf?” it’s said quietly, almost resigned, but yuuta can tell from his tone that toge is brimming with concern. maybe if he just stays quiet-
a series of methodical clicks begins from the door, and yuuta is overwhelmed by both dread and relief, because toge is here, and he’s picking the lock, and he’s just so, so scared. yuuta buries his head into the blankets and sniffles, hoping it’ll hide his pathetic state. his lungs feel on the edge of bursting, and there’s black spots in his vision but he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t-
the door finally clicks open.
“yuuta,” toge cries, rushing forth and oh, oh, he’s so warm. “yuuta.”
a sob finally pushes its way from yuuta’s shriveled throat as he hears the tears in toge’s shaky voice. he feels his hands on his shoulders, turning yuuta (gently, so gently, with something like adoration) to face the ceiling, and he feels a bit more like he can breathe.
toge’s worry-filled expression is a sight for sore eyes, and yuuta feels some tension leave his body. he’s back to himself. present.
trembling, his hands twitch for some sort of contact, but he can’t really lift them. toge’s immediately moving, pulling the blankets aside and tucking them both in - pulling yuuta’s head onto his chest, letting him tug his legs up, and curling arms around him. a once-oppressive bed loses its hard edges, clouding, blurring, soft and easy.
“tuna mayo.” you’re alright. “salmon.” i’m here.
and so yuuta clutches at purple fabric and weeps into toge’s uniform until stripes of sun heat their faces, until he’s too tired and dehydrated to shed another tear. toge is there and there and there, solid and strong and warm. the close physical contact - skin against fabric, against hair, against skin - is overwhelming in the best way. it silences the whitewater turbulence of his mind and leaves him placid, like a cat curled up in sunlight. it’s so real, so toge, and he finds himself more safe than ever, even with crust and snot smeared across the both of them. a wobbly smile finds its way onto yuuta’s face. he missed this. missed him.
when his breathing’s evened out, toge speaks, voice like the dust particles dancing in the sunlight. “mustard leaf? salmon roe.” can i call someone? to bring my stuff to the door. it’s clear that he’s not sure if he should leave yuuta’s side.
yuuta shivers at the question, attempting to stutter out a no, but settles for shaking his head into toge’s side. he feels more okay, sure, but it’ll take years yet to undo his anxious thought patterns, and he feels safe right now - with just toge.
“…salmon. tuna tuna?” okay. can i go and come back?
yuuta hesitates. his fingers squeeze toge’s shoulders, but he nods. he knows it’ll be okay.
toge grins, soft and honey, pulling away and sliding off the bed. “salmon!” be right back!
yuuta focuses on his breath and the warmth of his bed, drifting sleepily until the door creaks with toge’s return.
toge slides back into bed, uniform swapped for a hoodie and shorts, placing a backpack onto the bedside table. “fish flakes,” he says, firmly. water.
toge attempts to shift yuuta’s shoulders to help him sit up, but yuuta makes a noise of protest at the dizziness. realizing toge won’t understand, but lacking the focus to sign, he just shuts his eyes and huffs out a breath.
toge nods but persists, even more cautious in his attempt to place yuuta higher up onto the pillows, and helping him take sips from a glass of water. it’s refreshing, actually, and helps yuuta breathe more clearly without as much of an ache in his throat. when done, he breathes out a sigh and lets his head land on toge’s shoulder.
despite everything, yuuta manages to flush, a little. there’s something about being close to toge. more than just grounding - it’s a steady sort of joy, gentle exhilaration. a promise of okay. like he isn’t a high school student fighting ghosts that most can’t see. like he doesn’t live with his friends’ ghosts at his heels. like he’s normal.
and maybe, yuuta resolves as toge pulls out his laptop, he can be.
blurry lights shift as toge turns down the screen brightness and opens a streaming site on a new tab. “mustard leaf?” got any preferences?
“mmm…” yuuta tucks his head into the folds of toge’s hoodie, breathing in the soft scent of cleanliness that toge’s clothing always seems to give off. he could live here, tucked between hood and shoulder - this could be home. he noses further into the folds of fabric. you pick.
curled into the blond’s side and feeling warmer than ever, yuuta watches as toge’s fingers race to type out the title of some film, probably. he can’t quite read it with toge’s hoodie covering half his vision. a few clicks later, and he hears the nostalgic tune of the animal crossing movie.
yuuta gasps quietly, eyes lighting up. he shifts his face to get a better view of the screen, and the corners of his lips tug upward as the familiar opening scene plays. last time he watched this movie was…
“salmon roe,” toge mumbles, grin evident in his voice. “tuna tuna.” we watched this during that film marathon with panda.
he remembers toge poking at him to join them that night, compromising that he’d watch yuuta’s favorite movie in exchange. he remembers the buckets of butter popcorn, the way easy laughter fluttered through toge’s dorm. he remembers both of them leaned against the side of a sleeping panda, still too scared to touch, daring pinkies within centimeters of each other. and look at them now.
toge closes the blinds, letting the nostalgia and happy memories pull them into the cartoon. they lose all sense of time watching Ai and the villagers move through the seasons. it’s during winter that yuuta finds his eyes drifting closed.
he fights to keep them open, but it’s a losing battle.
toge presses his cheek against the top of yuuta’s head. “tuna tuna,” he whispers, without even looking down. he knows. you can rest. it’s alright.
yuuta hesitantly lets out a breath, but he can already feel the darkness pulling foggy fingers over his eyes. curled into his boy’s side, safe in his arms, he succumbs to the warmth.
and is okay.